MY ELVISH BOYFRIEND (7)
By Dolphin Dan
I had not seen Ernie Maundelow for almost three years. In the winter of my junior year in college (my home was in Washington state but I was going to college in Texas), he wrote me a letter suggesting I come visit him during the summer in his home country of Varandikar. This was in 1996 and Ernie and I were both 21. He was not in university but rather had spent the last three years working on his family's farm after his father died. I doubt he'd had a break from that life in all that time. I was eager to go. It would be my first time outside the U.S. I was also hoping to rekindle my relationship with him which I'd assumed was permanently over after he left high school.
Before I talk about the trip you need to know a little about Varandikar itself. It's in Eastern Europe, bordering on the Black Sea. It is the poorest country in Europe. A lot of mythological and horror lore comes from Varandikar, tales of not just elves (which are real) but vampires, goblins and orcs as well (which, of course, are not real). Elves are about 60% of the population but they were generally oppressed by most of the medieval kingdoms and modern governments that have ruled the country. Varandikar was taken over by fascists in the early 1930s and was a member of the Axis during World War II. After the war it was occupied by Soviet troops and became a Communist republic, a buffer state of the USSR. That government was overthrown in 1989 like most Communist governments in Europe. By the mid-90s Varandikar was trying to bounce back, but it was still poor and its politics were a constant struggle between a right-wing fascist party, a leftover of the Communist party, and the moderate CED (Christian Elvish Democrats) party which was nominally in charge. When I told them I was going to Varandikar my parents were not happy. I had to get a bunch of shots and even apply for a visa from the Varandi Embassy in Washington, D.C. You can go to most European countries without a visa, but Varandikar never signed the treaty that provided for that.
The idea was that I was going to spend half the summer working to build up the money to go, and then the second half of the summer in Varandikar. When I left UT at the beginning of May I was fortunate enough to get a summer job back in Bellhampton (Washington) working in the office of a company, run by a friend of my dad, that made decorative rock for people's yards. Anyway, I won't waste time talking about the job. I couldn't wait to leave. I was supposed to go right after the 4th of July holiday and I would return on August 26, spend only a few days at home before making the long drive back down to Austin for my final year of college.
The day I got to Varandikar was a complete botch-up and actually quite creepy for a number of reasons. I left on Friday morning, July 5, on a flight from Seattle to to New York's JFK airport. I was then supposed to catch a flight to Rome, with a stopover in Paris, and finally catch my last leg from Rome to Belenta, the capital of Varandikar, on Varandi Air. That was statistically the most dangerous airline in Europe; they killed more of their passengers than Aeroflot (the former Soviet airline). Ernie lived in the town of Proscot, a three hour drive from Belenta. He would pick me up in the capital and drive me back to stay with him in Proscot. That was the plan, anyway.
The flight I took from New York to Rome was Trans World Airways (TWA) Flight 800. This was the same flight, and in fact I think the self-same plane, that blew up over Long Island two weeks later, one of the worst air disasters of all time. I didn't even know that happened until after I returned to the U.S. in August, but it was a spooky coincidence.
I had a long layover in Rome. While waiting in the airport I was very surprised to hear my name paged on the intercom, with a thick Italian accent. I went to the information desk and they handed me a message that had been transcribed. Ernie called the Rome airport and left a message telling me that the truck he was going to use to drive me from Belenta to Proscot had broken down and he couldn't get alternate transportation in time. He said I could catch a bus that would take me to Vychan, the next town over (Proscot is very small). He told me which bus to take and how to get on it. This was very scary, traveling alone on rural buses in a foreign country, but there was no other way to do it. The last three words of the message were, "Right Here Waiting," which was the title of a song that had come to symbolize our relationship.
I should tell you that I brought with me the little pebble, inscribed with elvish writing, that Ernie had left me three years before when he departed. In many ways I wonder if this pebble was responsible for saving my life.
Varandi Air was complete crap. Boarding the plane in Rome, I passed the airworthiness certificate taped to the cabin wall which stated that the plane had been manufactured in 1972. The plane was older than I was. The flight attendant, there was only one, was an elf but she was a very dour woman and if she had green makeup she would have looked like the Wicked Witch of the West. The back of the plane stank from the bathroom which hadn't been cleaned in a while. This wasn't the best introduction to Ernie's country.
When I walked into the terminal at Belenta it was like entering another world--or like going back in time. It seriously looked like the 1950s. There were elves everywhere, but suprisingly many were in traditional dress, men with broad-brimmed hats and colorful waistcoats, women in homespun skirts with their hair usually tied up in snoods. Some of the cars pulled up in front of the terminal literally were from the 1950s; I saw a real life 1957 Chevy Nomad with a bunch of battered suitcases lashed to the top. Apparently gas stations are rare in Varandikar. Nearly every car I saw had jerry cans strapped on to the rear bumpers and in fact most cars had homemade racks attached to their fenders for this purpose. You did not want to rear-end anyone in Varandikar or your car would blow up.
I saw a poster on the wall in the airport. It was a political advertisement that showed a blond elvish man in a brown shirt and an armband, red, with a symbol that was not a swastika but two angular shapes that were obviously meant to make you think of a swastika. The copy read, in elvish, "ONWARD TO VARANDIKAR'S GREATNESS!" The man on the poster, a politician, was surrounded by idyllic-looking elvish women and children in traditional gowns. The sight of this poster made me very uncomfortable. Fascism was real in this country.
I barely made the bus that Ernie told me to be on. It was a bus from the '50s and all the passengers except me were elves, most in traditional clothes, and I felt like the creature in the movie "Alien" in a room full of humans who hated me. There was one woman, an elf, who was holding a puppy in one hand and a chicken in the other. The bus got going and it was a very long, arduous and awkward trip. The bus was stifling. I also had no real idea where we were going, if it was to Proscot or somewhere else.
Two hours into the trip the bus broke down. Night was just falling, and the bus was going up a steep hill when something underneath it popped and it ran out of power and coasted to a halt. The driver said we would have to get out and spend the night. There was a small bed and breakfast within walking distance so all of us passengers went there. The bed and breakfast was in a very old building and the main dining room and bar was dimly lit. After I walked in I remember thinking, "This kind of place is where the first scene of every Dracula movie takes place." The proprietor, who was a gray-haired elf in a traditional homespun shirt and wool plaid waistcoat, asked me where I was going. I said Proscot, and I was a friend of the Maundelow family. The word "Maundelow" was apparently magic because instantly I was treated differently. They let me use the phone in their office where I called Ernie's house. I didn't get anyone live; I left a message on a tape machine and explained what had happened with the bus. When I got back to the dining room the proprietor's wife brought me a bottle of red wine, covered in a homemade basket, and without asking for it I was served a plate of food that included an amazing home cooked pork chop, cottage potatoes and an enormous loaf of black bread with delicious garlic butter. I was also given the best bedroom in the hotel. The bed was up on 12-inch stilts, presumably to protect it from rats. As I was going to sleep I heard a strange creature, maybe a coyote or a hyena, howling in the darkness beneath my window.
In the morning I was awakened by the proprietor's wife. She kept saying in elvish, "He is here! He is here!" I put my clothes on, went downstairs and outside the bed and breakfast, and I saw Ernie standing up against the side of an old pickup truck that dated probably from the 1940s. The truck had wooden rails built up in the back, across the bed area. Ernie looked fucking gorgeous. He was wearing a Metallica T-shirt, black dungaree pants and the same green Doc Martens boots that I helped him buy in Bellhampton, Washington in 1992. His body was much more thick and muscular than I had seen him last. His hair was still very long and on the left side of his head it had been set into two very long intricate braids. It was so exciting to see him again. My dick got hard instantly.
"I fixed the truck," were his first words (in English).
I ran forward and threw myself at him, and we hugged. Just being in his arms again was invigorating. He told me, "Not now, not here!" He suggested we have breakfast at the hotel before starting on for Proscot which was an hour away. It was a huge meal of eggs, pork and chicken sausages, cabbage fried in basalmic vinegar (a Varandi tradition) and more black bread. They even served beer with breakfast. The Varandi drink a tremendous amount of alcohol. When breakfast was over I got my bag and we clambered into the ancient truck for the ride home. Ernie had rigged a tape deck, if you can believe it, into the dashboard of this ancient truck and there were speakers duct-taped to the interior corners of the truck cab. He played mostly heavy metal, Metallica, Megadeth and Iron Maiden on his mix tape, but there were some pop songs too. One of them was "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx. It played as we drove down a very narrow bumpy road through the forest into the heart of Varandikar.
We got to the Maundelows' farmhouse, which was a surprisingly large wooden structure, very American-style (in about 1910) with a front porch and many pointed gables. Ernie's mother was a thin gray-haired elvish woman with a careworn face. She didn't speak a word of English, but she smiled and hugged me as Ernie introduced me. He also had two sisters, one about 18, the other perhaps 15, both blonde, curvaceous and beautiful. If I had a straight gene in my body I would seriously have been attracted to them. But I wanted Ernie, and he knew it. At the first practical moment, which was about a hour after we arrived, he took me to "the root barn," and I knew we were going to get it on.
There were several outbuildings from the main house, but the "root barn" was the smallest and most distant. It was a small wooden shack, almost falling down, where ostensibly potatoes, radishes and other crops were left in bins to root so they could be planted. It was also full of huge grimy glass jars of home-fermented beer and kegs of wine. Ernie showed me around, but pushed open a door at the back of the barn that led into a small room. There was an iron-framed bed in there and the walls were covered in flags and posters: a U.S. flag and one from the state of Washington, posters for the movies "Die Hard," "Batman Returns" and "Schindler's List," and also posters of heavy metal bands. There was even a picture of James Bond, played by Timothy Dalton. I knew this was Ernie's secret retreat.
We sat on the bed and started kissing instantly. Ernie grasped my face and neck with his hands and just having him hold me was invigorating. After about 30 seconds in we paused and he stripped off his T-shirt. In the past three years he had gotten some tattoos on his upper arms and shoulders, dragons and elvish runes and such. He was so incredibly hot, more so than he had ever been. He said in his accented voice, "I hef vaited for zis day for three years now." We quickly got naked and I laid on the bed on my stomach. Ernie took some oil from a fluted glass jar which he put on his hands and then began to massage me, rubbing it deeply into my shoulders, my back and eventually my butt cheeks. I grew more and more turned on. I asked him, how do you know no one will disturb us? He said, "Ze vomen vill not come here. Zey know zis is my place." A moment later, for the first time in 3 years I felt his fingers penetrating my butthole. I was ready for him as he wanted me.
Feeling Ernie's penis inside me again, after all this time, was absolutely heavenly. It was like no time had passed, and the long arduous journey a quarter of the way across the world was nothing at all. Ernie's excitement, grunting as he pushed into me with increasing speed, got me hot too. The iron frame of the bed creaked with each stroke. I remember worrying that his mother and sisters would hear us and know what was happening, but after a while I didn't care. His happiness was all that mattered to me. He grabbed my shoulders, groaned and his dick exploded inside me. His whole body literally shook and shuddered after he reached orgasm. Ernie wiped his hair back from his sweaty forehead, kissed the back of my neck and my shoulder and said, in elvish, that he loved me. I started humping the bed which was an old thin mattress probably filled with chicken feathers. He reached under, grabbed my dick and positioned his hand so I was basically fucking it. The bed frame creaked again as I moved. I came in about 30 seconds. My body shuddered too. We lay together, Ernie's oily dick softening in my butt crack, me feeling the warm puddle of my own cum soaking into the rough homespun woolen sheets underneath me.
This was the greatest day of my life up until that point, well worth waiting 3 years for.
More to come...
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